


Lucky Socks, Lucky Souls

by APgeeksout



Category: Stryka (2015 short film)
Genre: Affection, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2016-12-09
Packaged: 2018-09-07 06:29:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8787214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: Callen and Stryka inventory their take after a fair-to-middling heist.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



The job wasn't a total bust.

Sure, the safe had taken longer to crack than Callen had expected, and, okay, in the end they hadn't so much cracked it as dissolved a hole in the side with strong acid, and maybe the excess had puddled on the floor and begun to turn the soles of their boots gummy by the time they were able to smash through the brittled metal and pull out the contents. Possibly the haul was not quite as grand as they'd hoped when they first set eyes on the safe: heavy and imposing and surely the place where anybody'd stash the most valuable loot.

Still, they hadn't gotten pinched while getting into the office tower or while leaving with the safe or while disposing of its crusty, crumpled shell in an out-of-the-way alleyway near the docks. All of which meant they weren't in a holding-cell - which meant that they didn't have to call Stryka's family bail-bondsman (which, in it's own turn, meant that Stryka wouldn't have to endure her mother's third-degree about the job and, so, wouldn't spend the rest of the day in a funk).

Instead of Central Booking, they got to settle down in Stryka's living room with their boots lying forlorn and partially-disintegrated on a stack of old newspapers by the door and their take spread out over the braided rug they'd lifted from a furniture van during their first week as partners.

<"It's not a total bust."> Stryka sighed and fitted a gaudy ring over the joint of her pinkie finger. She held her hand out and wobbled it around a bit to catch the light. <"Even paste gemstones are worth something.">

"Not to mention the very excellent libations," he said, tipping another inch of the sweet, golden liqueur - the cheap stuff, but bought on someone else's nickel - they'd rescued from the safe into his tumbler. He raised it in a silent toast before tipping it down his throat.

Stryka shook her head at him fondly, her own glass barely-touched on the rug by her side. He knew that booze didn't affect her species, and suspected that she didn't care for the taste of this one; he also suspected it was apparent how hard it was hitting him, after a night of inhaled acid fumes and a stomach empty but for the street-meat breakfast they'd grabbed on the walk back to Styrka's place.

<"And all this high literature,"> she said, casting a wary gaze over the assortment of comic books fanned across the rug in their plastic sleeves. The one nearest her bent knee featured a four-color illustration of a buff gentleman being probed by a quartet of bug-eyed little green men. Another had a remarkably detailed depiction of a full-busted princess being slowly extricated from her ballgown by a number of lovingly-rendered purple tentacles. The one he'd taken from its sleeve to flip through appeared to recount the adventures of an astronaut who was perhaps a _touch_ more excited than might be expected at the prospect of being swallowed alive by a giant blob-monster, his spacesuit extravagantly tented in the panels where he was marched toward the edge of the beast's enclosure.

"One man's trash is another man's treasure. These could actually be worth something."

<"They'll make a good story, if nothing else,"> she agreed.

He helped himself to another measure of the liqueur. They had work to do - there was always a next job to start planning - but he estimated that they'd earned a bit of a celebration, too. "We'll take them to the book-dealer a couple of blocks over from the diner with the good toast," he said, and smiled when Stryka leaned over to pour the remnants of her drink into his glass as well. "He's a good old soul; he'll give us a fair estimate."

<"Hopefully your cut'll be enough to put you in a new pair of socks,"> she teased, pinching the tip of the toe that emerged from a hole in his sock between two blunt fingernails. Not hard enough to be painful, but surely hard enough to tickle, and he realized as the laugh fell out of him, too loud and too big, that he was really very drunk.

"I'll have you to know that these are extremely lucky socks," he said, attempting to tamp down on a giggle and mostly failing. "Extremely. I have only been taken into custody twice while wearing these socks."

Stryka laughed and swept the pornographic comics back into a single stack, rising to carry them to a safe spot on her kitchen counter. <"Find us something to watch, Lucky,"> she said, tipping her head toward the television. <"I'll make some popcorn.">

Fortunately, scaring up the popcorn meant a few minutes of puttering in the kitchen, so he was able to engage her remote control in epic battle without witnesses. By the time she brought out the mixing bowl full of popcorn (and a bottle of water which she pressed into his palm without comment) and they had settled onto the couch, the station was tuned to a soap opera that he knew she liked more than she let on.

"This is terrible!" he enthused, slumping into Stryka's space while the screen filled with the violet stalk eyes of the show's weeping heroine. "Abalonia's awful mother-in-law has been hacking her Therabot records so that with every session she becomes more convinced that her wife would be better off without her."

<"After everything they've been through together,"> Stryka tsked, dropping a smushed throw pillow onto her lap and pushing his head onto it unceremoniously.

They watched Abalonia's wife sharing her marital woes with her scheming mother and their neighbors grappling with similarly dire fates, and Callen felt himself beginning to drift off, lulled by the alcohol and the quiet, Stryka's warmth and the rhythmic way her thick fingernails scritched through his hair.

"These aren't really lucky socks," he confessed, yawning as his eyes slipped closed on a commercial for a sleek, high-end hovercar. "They're actually very average. I just said that to make you laugh."

<"I know,"> she said, the beginnings of a laugh in her voice now. <"You do that a lot.">

"We are lucky, though," he added.

<"Rich, too."> She stroked through his hair in a way that made him sigh. <"Now, sleep it off; I need you sober to help me plan our next big score.">


End file.
